Monday, October 18, 2010

Savage vs Dodd = Rutgers version of Applewhite vs. Simms

While driving into work today, I was listening to Rivals Radio and host Bill King made a great comment on the ongoing quarterback battle at Rutgers between Tom Savage and Chas Dodd. King said it reminded him of the QB war that broke out at the University of Texas between Chris Simms and Major Applewhite (pictured below during happier times). The more I thought of it, during my hour long drive into the office, the more I thought it was correct.

Savage is like Simms in the a lot of ways. Both of them pass the eye test, both are NFL sized quarterbacks with perfect mechanics and have been groomed for this moment for a bunch of years. Simms was a huge recruit out of the New Jersey and showed that Texas had reaching power outside of their own state. While Savages was a national top 10 QB recruit for Rutgers out of Philly and showed that Scarlet Knights could go head to head with big time programs like Penn State, Miami, Michigan for top ranked players.

Dodd is just like Applewhite. Both are listed at six foot or a little over but don't look like it. Both don't pass the eye test, if you saw them get off the bus for a game you would think that they are team managers as opposed to the starting quarterback. Both have that special it factor that is so hard to measure. During his two starts so far, Dodd has engineered come from behind wins against Army and UConn.

Texas head coach Mack Brown decided that Applewhite was the perfect fit for Texas about 12 years ago and I have feeling that Schiano is going to decide that Dodd is the right fit for this Rutgers team, but the one thing that Schiano has to do is make a decision and stick to it, if not things could get out of hand like they did at Texas a bunch years ago.